Unbecoming Humans

Chapter 9

Content warning: war crimes

Someone's knocking at my door.

The words were splashed across the boarded up storefront in hasty, unpracticed, black spray paint. The words were barely legible under the layers of tags and other graffiti, but it was exactly what the person walking by was looking for. They stepped out of the stream of pedestrians teeming along the sidewalk, pulled their hood tighter around their face, glanced around quickly to see if anyone had taken notice of them, and disappeared through a hidden gap between the boards.

Less than ten minutes later the same figure hurried through the alleyway behind the building and disappeared into the crowd moments before an explosion rocked the block. Chaos echoed over the nearby streets in shockwaves. Neighboring buildings were rocked to their foundations, several of them crumbling or collapsing entirely. People were knocked to the ground by the blast, buffeted by debris, crying, screaming, bleeding. Some stopped to help, others ran in every direction.

Panic spread from block to block until it gripped everyone within a mile radius. Those trying to help were overwhelmed by the flood of need, people searching for their loved ones, people wounded and dying, people frozen or fleeing in fear. Sirens were drowned out by the wails, the fires and smaller explosions that resulted, the screeching and rumbling of more buildings collapsing.

It was all so much, too much, a rupture in the arteries of a dying city. Yet it was merely a spark in a powder keg, the one that finally caught and ignited. It was one person running into a store where the staff had fled, and filling their bag with everything they could carry, and then another. Before long the shelves were bare in the store, the one next door, and the one across the street. Rocks were thrown through windows that weren't already broken, people fought over expensive electronics, furniture, and food. More fires broke out, more bones were broken, more blood spilled.

Help didn't come, not for the people who were suffering in the wake of the explosion. People who thought they might take advantage of the situation to improve their meager lot were suddenly met with fully armed resistance. That was their help. Trained soldiers descended, forced people back out on the street herding them with their bodies and shields. A shot rang out. A body fell to the ground, trampled before anyone could even tell who it was, and what started as a disaster mutated into a battle between the city's armed police and the panicked civilians. The police were only repelled by the sheer number of people swarming to meet their bullets and armor with fists and improvised weapons.

Before dawn, the city glowed with the flicker of flames and flashes from grenades and the muzzles of guns. There was nothing and no one to stop the violence. There would be no end. The hooded figure who started it all sat quietly on the last train out of the city.